Posted on 06/18/2018 1:52:33 PM PDT by Sopater
With the sestercentennial of June 1768 passing by, I have few days to devote to the Battle of Bunker Hill. But here’s Charles E. Frye’s map of that battle, completed in 2011 and available through Wikipedia. It’s unusual in positioning American army units on the Charlestown peninsula.
Frye is an army-trained cartographer. In this interview, Frye talked about how he came to make that map:
My wife suggested I help my oldest son with his 5th grade history project and that we could research to find out where [our ancestor] Isaac [Frye] was on the battlefield. Reading about the battle proved bewildering and disorienting. Therefore, my natural inclination was to make a map along with a timeline to organize that information. We started by mapping the Boston vicinity, including what was then known as the Charlestown Peninsula. Based on that and the major landmarks of the peninsula, we could then see the form of the battle and the sequence of events. My son hand-drew a one-page color map of the battle and wrote a short essay describing where Isaac most likely was located. We had narrowed it down to two possible locations. It took years before I finally located the documentation indicating which of the two was correct.Here’s more on Frye’s data model and method for others to use with G.I.S. systems.
I ended up making my own map using GIS and because I learned the Library of Congress’s map division had copies of most of the maps depicting the battle, and already had a map-scanning program. GIS allows for scanned maps to be positioned relative to modern geographic data, which then could be used to create a historical map in the GIS. I knew a cartographer working at the Library of Congress, so I contacted her, and their staff bumped up the remaining maps of the battle so I could have faster access.
My map looked good to me, and it was rich with information. I shared it with the map division staff, and they liked it and cataloged a copy. However, the “Aha!” moment occurred for me two years later when I first visited the Bunker Hill Monument. There is a diorama there depicting the battle. Other than placement of the cannon, my map completely agreed with the diorama! How does a non-historian do that part-time in only a matter of months? With GIS of course. Mapping information in GIS forces rigor, which among other things affords efficiency because non-conforming information cannot be forced into database like it can be forced into a paragraph. I later published a data model and method for historians to use GIS in their work. I am happy to say many historians have since adopted, adapted, and expanded on that work.
I’ve never seen a map of Bunker Hill where formed US units outflanked the British on the British left, as shown here.
As to Wikipedia, Frye put the map on Wikipedia, so it’s not exactly an independent source verifying what he did.
A British victory.
You used GIS well
Another of his poems was an interpretation of his grandmother's eye-witness account of the Battle of Bunker Hill, fought on the 17th of June in 1775. My grandmother had this committed to memory and used to recite it to me as a child. This is that poem.
Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle as She Saw it from the Belfry
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
'T is like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembers
All the achings and the quakings of "the times that tried men's souls;"
When I talk of _Whig_ and _Tory_, when I tell the _Rebel_ story,
To you the words are ashes, but to me they're burning coals.
I had heard the muskets' rattle of the April running battle;
Lord Percy's hunted soldiers, I can see their red coats still;
But a deadly chill comes o'er me, as the day looms up before me,
When a thousand men lay bleeding on the slopes of Bunker's Hill.
'T was a peaceful summer's morning, when the first thing gave us warning
Was the booming of the cannon from the river and the shore:
"Child," says grandma, "what's the matter, what is all this noise and clatter?
Have those scalping Indian devils come to murder us once more?"
Poor old soul! my sides were shaking in the midst of all my quaking,
To hear her talk of Indians when the guns began to roar:
She had seen the burning village, and the slaughter and the pillage,
When the Mohawks killed her father with their bullets through his door.
Then I said, "Now, dear old granny, don't you fret and worry any,
For I'll soon come back and tell you whether this is work or play;
There can't be mischief in it, so I won't be gone a minute"--
For a minute then I started. I was gone the livelong day.
No time for bodice-lacing or for looking-glass grimacing;
Down my hair went as I hurried, tumbling half-way to my heels;
God forbid your ever knowing, when there's blood around her flowing,
How the lonely, helpless daughter of a quiet household feels!
In the street I heard a thumping; and I knew it was the stumping
Of the Corporal, our old neighbor, on that wooden leg he wore,
With a knot of women round him,--it was lucky I had found him,
So I followed with the others, and the Corporal marched before.
They were making for the steeple,--the old soldier and his people;
The pigeons circled round us as we climbed the creaking stair,
Just across the narrow river--oh, so close it made me shiver!--
Stood a fortress on the hill-top that but yesterday was bare.
Not slow our eyes to find it; well we knew who stood behind it,
Though the earthwork hid them from us, and the stubborn walls were dumb:
Here were sister, wife, and mother, looking wild upon each other,
And their lips were white with terror as they said, THE HOUR HAS COME!
The morning slowly wasted, not a morsel had we tasted,
And our heads were almost splitting with the cannons' deafening thrill,
When a figure tall and stately round the rampart strode sedately;
It was PRESCOTT, one since told me; he commanded on the hill.
Every woman's heart grew bigger when we saw his manly figure,
With the banyan buckled round it, standing up so straight and tall;
Like a gentleman of leisure who is strolling out for pleasure,
Through the storm of shells and cannon-shot he walked around the wall.
At eleven the streets were swarming, for the red-coats' ranks were forming;
At noon in marching order they were moving to the piers;
How the bayonets gleamed and glistened, as we looked far down, and listened
To the trampling and the drum-beat of the belted grenadiers!
At length the men have started, with a cheer (it seemed faint-hearted),
In their scarlet regimentals, with their knapsacks on their backs,
And the reddening, rippling water, as after a sea-fight's slaughter,
Round the barges gliding onward blushed like blood along their tracks.
So they crossed to the other border, and again they formed in order;
And the boats came back for soldiers, came for soldiers, soldiers still:
The time seemed everlasting to us women faint and fasting,--
At last they're moving, marching, marching proudly up the hill.
We can see the bright steel glancing all along the lines advancing--
Now the front rank fires a volley--they have thrown away their shot;
For behind their earthwork lying, all the balls above them flying,
Our people need not hurry; so they wait and answer not.
Then the Corporal, our old cripple (he would swear sometimes and tipple),--
He had heard the bullets whistle (in the old French war) before,--
Calls out in words of jeering, just as if they all were hearing,--
And his wooden leg thumps fiercely on the dusty belfry floor:--
"Oh! fire away, ye villains, and earn King George's shillin's,
But ye'll waste a ton of powder afore a 'rebel' falls;
You may bang the dirt and welcome, they're as safe as Dan'l Malcolm
Ten foot beneath the gravestone that you've splintered with your balls!"
In the hush of expectation, in the awe and trepidation
Of the dread approaching moment, we are well-nigh breathless all;
Though the rotten bars are failing on the rickety belfry railing,
We are crowding up against them like the waves against a wall.
Just a glimpse (the air is clearer), they are nearer,--nearer,--nearer,
When a flash--a curling smoke-wreath--then a crash--the steeple shakes--
The deadly truce is ended; the tempest's shroud is rended;
Like a morning mist it gathered, like a thunder-cloud it breaks!
Oh the sight our eyes discover as the blue-black smoke blows over!
The red-coats stretched in windrows as a mower rakes his hay;
Here a scarlet heap is lying, there a headlong crowd is flying
Like a billow that has broken and is shivered into spray.
Then we cried, "The troops are routed! they are beat--it can't be doubted!
God be thanked, the fight is over!"--Ah! the grim old soldier's smile!
"Tell us, tell us why you look so?" (we could hardly speak, we shook so),--
"Are they beaten? _Are_ they beaten? ARE they beaten?"--"Wait a while."
Oh the trembling and the terror! for too soon we saw our error:
They are baffled, not defeated; we have driven them back in vain;
And the columns that were scattered, round the colors that were tattered,
Toward the sullen, silent fortress turn their belted breasts again.
All at once, as we are gazing, lo the roofs of Charlestown blazing!
They have fired the harmless village; in an hour it will be down!
The Lord in heaven confound them, rain his fire and brimstone round them,--
The robbing, murdering red-coats, that would burn a peaceful town!
They are marching, stern and solemn; we can see each massive column
As they near the naked earth-mound with the slanting walls so steep.
Have our soldiers got faint-hearted, and in noiseless haste departed?
Are they panic-struck and helpless? Are they palsied or asleep?
Now! the walls they're almost under! scarce a rod the foes asunder!
Not a firelock flashed against them! up the earthwork they will swarm!
But the words have scarce been spoken, when the ominous calm is broken,
And a bellowing crash has emptied all the vengeance of the storm!
So again, with murderous slaughter, pelted backwards to the water,
Fly Pigot's running heroes and the frightened braves of Howe;
And we shout, "At last they're done for, it's their barges they have run for:
They are beaten, beaten, beaten; and the battle's over now!"
And we looked, poor timid creatures, on the rough old soldier's features,
Our lips afraid to question, but he knew what we would ask:
"Not sure," he said; "keep quiet,--once more, I guess, they'll try it--
Here's damnation to the cut-throats!"--then he handed me his flask,
Saying, "Gal, you're looking shaky; have a drop of old Jamaiky;
I'm afeard there'll be more trouble afore the job is done;"
So I took one scorching swallow; dreadful faint I felt and hollow,
Standing there from early morning when the firing was begun.
All through those hours of trial I had watched a calm clock dial,
As the hands kept creeping, creeping,--they were creeping round to four,
When the old man said, "They're forming with their bagonets fixed for storming:
It's the death-grip that's a-coming,--they will try the works once more."
With brazen trumpets blaring, the flames behind them glaring,
The deadly wall before them, in close array they come;
Still onward, upward toiling, like a dragon's fold uncoiling,--
Like the rattlesnake's shrill warning the reverberating drum!
Over heaps all torn and gory--shall I tell the fearful story,
How they surged above the breast-work, as a sea breaks over a deck;
How, driven, yet scarce defeated, our worn-out men retreated,
With their powder-horns all emptied, like the swimmers from a wreck?
It has all been told and painted; as for me, they say I fainted,
And the wooden-legged old Corporal stumped with me down the stair:
When I woke from dreams affrighted the evening lamps were lighted,--
On the floor a youth was lying; his bleeding breast was bare.
And I heard through all the flurry, "Send for WARREN! hurry! hurry!
Tell him here's a soldier bleeding, and he'll come and dress his wound!"
Ah, we knew not till the morrow told its tale of death and sorrow,
How the starlight found him stiffened on the dark and bloody ground.
Who the youth was, what his name was, where the place from which he came was,
Who had brought him from the battle, and had left him at our door,
He could not speak to tell us; but 't was one of our brave fellows,
As the homespun plainly showed us which the dying soldier wore.
For they all thought he was dying, as they gathered round him crying,--
And they said, "Oh, how they'll miss him!" and "What _will_ his mother do?"
Then, his eyelids just unclosing like a child's that has been dozing,
He faintly murmured, "Mother!"--and--I saw his eyes were blue.
"Why, grandma, how you're winking!" Ah, my child, it sets me thinking
Of a story not like this one. Well, he somehow lived along;
So we came to know each other, and I nursed him like a--mother,
Till at last he stood before me, tall, and rosy-cheeked, and strong.
And we sometimes walked together in the pleasant summer weather,
--"Please to tell us what his name was?" Just your own, my little dear,--
There's his picture Copley painted: we became so well acquainted,
That--in short, that's why I'm grandma, and you children all are here!
What’s with the 25th MA?
I found out he 2as later court marshalled and kicked out of the army. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0225
"Why, grandma, how you're winking!" Ah, my child, it sets me thinking
Of a story not like this one. Well, he somehow lived along;
So we came to know each other, and I nursed him like a--mother,
Till at last he stood before me, tall, and rosy-cheeked, and strong.
And we sometimes walked together in the pleasant summer weather,
--"Please to tell us what his name was?" Just your own, my little dear,--
There's his picture Copley painted: we became so well acquainted,
That--in short, that's why I'm grandma, and you children all are here!
Was Holmes' grandmother the little girl narrating the poem?
I saw that, too. Col. Gerrish with 421 men who refused to join the battle? What in the world? Never heard that before.
Yes. She was indeed the eye-witness.
Who was the wounded soldier? Who was in the Copley painting she made reference to?
In some ways, I feel we are standing on a precipice like that today. Some morning we are going to wake up and find all the Democrat, FBI, CIA and DOJ criminals have been arrested and we will look at each other with terror and say THE HOUR HAS COME! We would be heading into a great unknown at that point.
I don't know. It would have been one of Holmes, Sr.'s grandfathers, but I don't know which.
Lost because the Americans ran out of Ammo
clinton/obama have tried during their regimes to make sure that american forces dont have enough ammo to sustain any war
Ping
If you study the AmRevWar that much, nothing like that would surprise you. Especially first thing in the war.
Interesting. Thank you.
“A British victory”
Not really. The Americans proved that they were willing and able to put up good fight against British regulars - and got away to fight another day.
We won the war, didn’t we?
Issachar Bates—who was the teenage Fifer in my ancestor's company (Capt. Ichabod Dexter's in Col. Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge's Reg't. at that time)—later became an early Shaker missionary, hymn writer, and poet. He had some reminiscences from his experiences in the Revolution which were recorded and later published. Although relatively brief, these anecdotes do provide an interesting and informative peek into what my own ancestor must have experienced as a foot soldier in the War for Independence.
One anecdote Bates related was how, during the Siege of Boston, General Israel Putnam had offered a bounty of RUM for any soldier who could recover a British cannonball that had been fired fired at the American encampment,. This was offered because the Continental Army dearly needed lead for both bullets and cannonballs.
Unfortunately, this "led" to some stiff competition, and General Putnam ultimately had to suspend the bounties, due to the fact that several soldiers ended up with broken legs when trying to stop cannonballs that were still rolling at the time! I thought that was a colorful anecdote...
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